


You're a Dicey Situation

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-15 18:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7233016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frisk turns back time to try to save Asriel — because when what you know how to do is hammer, you start seeing nails everywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Ending

"For something I have to be better to do now would mean it can't be done later, right?" Does that make sense? It probably doesn't make sense. You've never been much good at stringing that many words together without them getting all snarled up. Sure enough, Asriel looks confused, so you clarify, "Can't do this later," before hastily adding, "probably."

"Do what?" Asriel asks. You hold out your hand, and he takes it. He has soft, furry fingers, and scrabbly little claws, and squishy, heart-shaped padding on his palm. "Is that all? Well, I guess I _won't_ have hands for very much longer, but..." He forces a chuckle.

You flop down on your back in the flower bed and pull him with you. He yelps as he falls, but it turns into a more genuine laugh than before when the surprisingly thick and spongy plant growth catches him. Still holding his hand, you tilt your head to look at him lying beside you, his eyes as green and gentle as the tangles of stems and leaves that saved you when you first fell here.

"You are very good," you tell him. You want to make him feel as unexpectedly, overwhelmingly loved as you felt when you first heard those words directed at you.

Back then, you didn't want to talk to the stupid dummy. You hated talking to anyone, and practicing on a prop that couldn't put you out of your misery by taking over the conversation just made things all the more painfully awkward. But you tried even though it was hard, and instead of laughing at or reprimanding you, Toriel smiled kindly and called you _good_.

Asriel's smile is rueful. "No, I'm not."

"Are too." You reach out with your free hand and press a finger to the part of his nose where a little bit of pink shows through the sparse white fuzz. It feels just as velvety as you imagined. Asriel blinks a few times as though startled, drawing your attention to his strikingly dark lashes. "Good, cute you!"

"Gosh," he says. You can feel his breath on your hand, warm as a hearth before a crackling flame. "I guess there's no arguing with someone as determined as you."

"Nope!" you agree.

"I still don't understand _why_ , though. You've heard everything I have to say. You've accepted my apology and gotten closure for what I did to you. So why would you want to spend any more time on me?"

That, unfortunately, is even harder to articulate than most things are for you. "Have you ever..?" you begin, before realizing the problem with trying to relate your own feelings to anything Asriel might have experienced. "Um. I know you were a flower for a long time, but before that... Is it okay to ask about before that?"

"Go ahead."

"Did you ever feel, after just seeing someone and hearing their voice and maybe saying a few words back and forth, like there was... something _there_? Something that you wanted to try to get a little closer to?"

"Oh." Asriel turns his head to stare up at the hole in the roof. "That isn't a feeling you should trust, Frisk."

"Why not?"

"It just isn't, okay?" He sounds upset about something. You don't want him to be upset. You don't know how long he has left to feel happier things.

You shift nearer to him, wriggling your way through the flowers. When you eventually stand up, you suspect that the katamari-like mess you call a hairstyle will have amassed many more leaves and seeds and golden petals, and possibly a weird bug or two. Asriel twists his head to the side again to see what you're doing, and you lean in, pressing your forehead against his forehead and the tip of your nose against the top of his snout. "You are very good," you repeat. "I trust you."

"Frisk..." He sighs into the hollow of your throat. "You'll leave when I tell you to, right? I don't want you to see me turn back. I can trust _you_ , right?"

At first you just nod, but that ends up seeming more like you're nuzzling against him. "Right!" you say instead. With the hand that isn't the one still holding his, you reach up and run your fingers through the fluff on his ear, combing out the stray bits of plant matter. Asriel sighs again, and this time you have a sense that it's more relaxed than resigned.

Not everything has to be talking. Monsters are good at understanding even when you don't say much.

As time slips by, you start to feel drowsy. Asriel is as soft and warm as he is sweet and kind, and this is such a cozy little cave that you're sharing. It's not at all how you remember it from right after you fell. The contrast of the darkness all around against this one dim spot of light looked so much sharper then, as did the rock forming the walls and floor. The yellow of the flowers was searingly bright, their fragrance cloying. Now, just a couple days of real time later, they seem faded and nostalgic.

"Um, Frisk?" Asriel asks, interrupting your thoughts. "Just how long are you planning on petting my ear like that?"

"Is it bad?"

"N-no! Not at all! It's just that I'm afraid I'll fall asleep if you keep it up much longer."

"I won't mind if you sleep."

"I don't want to, though. I don't have very long to do anything _but_ sleep." You abruptly stop petting him and squeeze his hand. "Ow! A little strong there, Frisk..."

"Sorry!" you say, relaxing your grip. You rub a reassuring little circle against his palm pad with your thumb, but something feels wrong.

"Please don't be. _I'm_ sorry. I see what you're trying to do, and it's so kind of you that I can hardly stand it." He's crying again, the tears briefly beading on his fur before soaking in and leaving little damp patches on his face. "I know how I _should_ feel about that kindness. I know this is a happy ending that people who've died much more unfairly than I did never get to have. I want to be grateful while I still can. I want to be a good memory to you. But I can't even do that right."

Dying isn't something that he or anyone should have to "do right". But you don't say that. You can't say it. Your heart is breaking too badly, collapsing like a black hole and sucking in your lungs and voice box.

Asriel's hand is flimsy and the wrong kind of soft. You try to ignore it, because if he hasn't noticed yet, you don't want to be the one to bring it to his attention. But maybe he's doing the same for you, because as it withers away until there's not enough left for you to hold onto anymore, all he does is cry quietly and press what remains of his body a little bit closer against you. Helplessly, unthinkingly, you blanket the top of his snout in a flurry of quick, light kisses, only stopping when he pulls away.

"Go," he says. "It's time."

You don't want to. You can't leave him like this. Asriel broke the barrier, saved you and everyone you've come to care about — and what have you done for him, really? Did you think that a few minutes of kindness could smooth over a lifetime of lonely misery? Did you think that you could make anything about this _okay_?

"Hurry!" There's pain in his voice, and you can't be sure that it's entirely emotional. "I shouldn't have let you stay this long. Please, Frisk. You promised!"

You did promise. Even if you can't save him, even if you can't meaningfully help him at all, this is one way you at least have the power to do right by him. You make yourself stand, make yourself turn and walk away, make yourself think of the friends you're going to now instead of the one you're leaving behind.

You've almost succeeded when you hear him scream, and your legs lock up. Before you can stop yourself, you glance over your shoulder.

Asriel is shrinking and disintegrating, his fur shriveling to reveal sickly green skin that shifts slowly to a less diluted hue as the last traces of pink fade away. He looks up at you, and his eyes meet yours, and in his final lucid moments he knows that you've betrayed him.

You whip your head back around and run.

—

Your tears have dried by the time you make it back to Toriel and the others. You smile for them, because you're supposed to be happy that you're all going to be free, and you can't tell them why you aren't without making even more of a mess of things.

You lead them out into the sun and do your best to share in their joy. Asgore asks you for one more favor, and you say yes even though you're twelve years old and sound even younger when you try to talk and you don't know the first thing about politics anyway. Asriel asked you to take care of his mom and dad, and they're such good and such unlucky people that you'd want to help them even if he hadn't.

One by one, your new friends wander off into the wide world until it's just you and Toriel left. "You must have a place to return to, do you not?" she asks you. You don't react, because you're good at not reacting. "What will you do now?" Her kind eyes shine with hope.

You want to stay with her. You should stay with her. It might make both of you a little happier if you did. But you know the truth about what happened to her son, and you can never tell her. You don't think you can live in a home with that kind of secret hanging over it.

"I have places to go," you say.

It's a lie, of course. People with places to go don't climb cursed mountains.

"Ah. I see. Well, I hope I'm not keeping you." You're a little surprised that she believes you so readily. Maybe you're a little disappointed, too. You watch her heart break one last time as she glances back and forth between you and the road down the mountain. "Frisk. 'See you around.'" She speaks the phrase stiltedly, like it's some obscure slang that she's only heard a few times and never used herself. Then she walks away, leaving you staring off across the valley all on your own.

It's a long way down, but more of a steep slope than a sheer cliff. If you fell here, you'd probably go rolling and painfully tear yourself to shreds on the rocks and brush. Not that you plan on falling, but you're still in the habit of noticing these things.

This can't be the best possible ending. It isn't any kind of happy ending at all.

You decided a long time ago that you weren't going to sacrifice anyone. Even if it hurt, even if it made you want to scream and rip things apart in frustration, whenever you made a mistake that destroyed someone's life, you had to go back and fix it. What makes this any different?

It feels like it's been weeks rather than days since you last saw the sky — and with all the looping back you've been doing, it very well might have been. You've finally resurfaced, but the great, wide stretch of blue you've been aching for is nowhere to be seen. Everyone always says that the sunsets in Fox Valley are spectacular, and although you don't have anything to compare them to, you're still a little in awe of the way they seem to light up the whole world in gold. Right now, though, that color fills you with unease.

You give yourself a few minutes to rest and take it all in. Then you tear it down and start over from the beginning.


	2. After/Before

The first thing you do, unfortunately, is panic a little. Your mind may not remember the fall any more vividly than it did a second ago when you were back on the surface, but your body has its own kind of memory, and you wake up trembling with it. You're good at panicking quietly, though, so you just lie still and breathe until you stop shaking enough to stand up and walk.

You don't know what's going to happen next. Before, Flowey was never as much of a wildcard as he had the power to be. You aren't sure whether he was being cautious or just playing some weird game, but he only acted slightly less predictably than everyone else. You doubt that's going to hold true anymore, but even so, you aren't afraid of him. You won't ever be afraid of him again, now that you've seen what he really is.

You walk into the corridor where you meet him, and he grins when he spots you, chummy and saccharine. "Howdy!" he says. "I'm Flowey. Flowey the flower! Hm, you're new to the Underground, arentcha?"

You don't react, because you're certain he's messing with you. That's what he always does. You listen patiently as he lays out the familiar trap, and dodge the bullets with ease.

"Hey buddy, you missed them!" he says, smile strained even though he had to be expecting that. You didn't let him hit you the second time, so why would you put up with it now? He fires a couple more waves at you, acting increasingly bratty after each miss until finally he just throws a tantrum and openly attempts to execute you. Then Toriel intervenes, and Flowey retreats into the ground and goes off somewhere you can't follow to talk to him. But that's still just him trying to confuse you, isn't it? What else could it be?

Maybe he doesn't scare you anymore, but he's definitely making you a little nervous.

Toriel calls you "innocent one," and Toriel holds your hand, and Toriel has no idea of all the ways you've done wrong by her already. You find it so hard to stomach that when she sends you up against the dummy, you whack it with your stick just to avoid having to hear her tell you how good you are. The carefully restrained fear in her voice as she admonishes you isn't any better, though. You're almost relieved when she leaves you this time, except that you _can't_ be relieved when she's so anxious, especially not now that you understand the true depth of the pain her anxiety springs from.

As you make your way to her home, you wonder at how different the Ruins look since you've adjusted to the dim lighting and stopped fearing everyone in them. The stone walls, though rough and stark, are a wonderfully soothing shade of violet, and the scattered red leaves are bright and vivid even in their decay. The monsters themselves are kind of cute, especially since you've gotten good enough at dodging that they can't really hurt you. You flatter and dance and share food and sympathy as comfortably as though you were among friends rather than adversaries — as comfortably as though you were the sort of person who could even have friends.

Maybe you really are that sort of person now. You know you aren't the sort of person you were the first time you passed through here, when you were terrified and angry at everything. Toriel wanted you to talk to monsters instead of fighting them, but Toriel wasn't there to save you no matter how long you stalled for, and you hated talking, and you hated being expected to do the impossible. Sometimes monsters ran away when you beat them up a bit and then stood back to give them room to move, but it wasn't always easy to know when to stop hitting them, and if you misjudged it and let up too early, they could hurt you.

You were so tired of letting people get away with hurting you. You were so tired of making yourself small and convenient. There was something freeing about the dream-like improbability of this world you'd found yourself in, about the almost unreal tidiness of bodies turning to dust instead of lying at your feet like an accusation, and especially about the suspicion that you were unlikely to survive here long no matter what you did, so behaving yourself would be pointless.

Then you didn't survive — and you woke up at the leaf pile just past where Toriel had left you, with much less reason to be afraid of death but more reason than ever to be afraid of pain. You couldn't even die to escape, so if you let people hurt you, they would just keep hurting you forever. You had the power to hurt them first, though, and so you used it unsparingly.

As you made your way through the Ruins, you found yourself starting to wonder, _Why rush this? Why hurry to get back to someone who stifles and controls you? You could take your time, hunt down every monster here and reduce them all to dust._

You didn't want that. Why would you ever want that? You didn't enjoy fighting. Maybe you did sort of enjoy winning fights, but you also felt a little sickened by it, and anyway, you didn't like it nearly enough to go actively seeking out pain.

_What if you didn't have to feel the pain? Would you want to then?_

How could you not feel it? You were thinking things that didn't make sense. Everything was frightening and painful and overwhelmingly unfamiliar, and the weirdness had started seeping into your own head. All you wanted was to get back to Toriel and be safe and have a chance to rest.

Finally, you did. She took you into her warm, sweet-smelling house, and showed you to a child's room, and turned off the light and left food for you when you immediately collapsed into bed. A part of you wished that this could be your happily ever after, that you could just stay forever where there was hot food to eat and a soft place to sleep and a living, loving mom to gently ruffle your hair and call you good. But the world outside this house was even more painful and dangerous than the world you'd been fleeing. Toriel had already proven she couldn't protect you from it, and she would probably stop trying altogether once she realized you weren't such a good kid after all. This couldn't last, but maybe if you left immediately, you could at least leave with untainted memories.

When you tried, though, you soon learned just how stifling and controlling Toriel could really be. It shouldn't have come as such a shock to you, because you'd thought that about her yourself, but there had been so little justification behind the thought that you'd written it off as a flash of temper.

_Maybe you should put more faith in yourself, and less in the beneficence of monsters._

You didn't know what "beneficence" was or why you were thinking about it, but you had more important things to worry about at the moment, like avoiding being set on fire.

 _Why are you even doing this?_ you wondered as you charged through the flames and took a swing at Toriel. She barely even flinched as your toy knife connected with her ribs — or at least where you assumed she had ribs. _There's no more freedom or safety to be had up there than there is down here. You could do much worse than Toriel, and you're unlikely to ever do better if you're so averse to taking risks or taking power for yourself. Why destroy the one halfway decent thing you've found?_

You weren't destroying anything. Toriel had told you to prove your strength, so that was what you would do. Or maybe you would just prove that you were awful and unlovable and she had no reason to even want to keep you here. Either way worked. Your next swing grazed her face, drawing a long, dust-dark gash across her cheek. You hadn't meant to leave a mark, but she'd left a number of red and blistering marks on you already, so you couldn't afford to hesitate. You jumped backward to give yourself space to evade the attack you saw her preparing for you.

 _You're horrible_. Fire streamed to either side of you, a lucky miss that left you an opening to advance. _Everything is horrible. Humans are evil, and monsters are useless, and every last one of you deserves whatever you get._ The world grew bright and hot as you pressed forward with your weapon raised, but even when you entered point blank range you found a breach in the wall of flame right where you needed one. _Don't you remember why you're here? Don't you remember why you jumped?_ Of course you remembered. The despair was still fresh in your mind, but not quite as fresh as the regret that had come only when you'd thought it was too late, or as the fear and rage you'd felt when other people had tried to do to you what you'd almost done to yourself. _You wanted to disappear. You wanted everything to disappear. So, disappear! And take this whole wretched world with you!_

With a turbulent rush of emotion, you swung hard enough to tear through Toriel's robe and leave a crumbling, gray dent just above her hip.

Toriel dropped to one knee, coughing up dust, and the heat in your veins went cold as abruptly as the air around you when the magic fire vanished. In a voice as gentle and unaccusing as it was ragged, she spoke words that flowed around you like the attacks you suddenly realized she'd never intended to hit home. You registered little more than a jumble of sounds, right up until she made her final plea: "Be good, won't you?"

You shrieked out a sob, then, because there wasn't any good in you to be. You'd always been bad down to the core of your soul, and if you'd ever doubted that, if you'd ever selfishly wished that someone would take a chance on loving you anyway, now you knew once and for all how wrong you'd been to do so.

Toriel scattered into dust, dying in a way that left no trace of her ever having lived at all. You cried yourself parched while something inside of you laughed with dizzy satisfaction at having been right about everything.

—

This is only the third time you've gone through the whole Ruins, but it's the fourth time you've faced Toriel at the exit. That first horror is far enough in the past that you can push it to the back of your mind, and Toriel no longer notes that you look as though you've seen a ghost.

You walk straight into the fire and watch Toriel's face flicker with poorly hidden distress. You could maybe spare yourself some injury and her some anxiety if you tried, but you shouldn't have to try. She shouldn't be doing this to you at all, and you can only fully forgive her if she faces that as directly as you've had to face your own sins. The flames part for you as you draw nearer, until finally you drop your stick at Toriel's feet, wrap your arms around her waist, and declare that you aren't going to fight her. She stops casting altogether and begs you to stay, and you hear her out with silent insistence until she talks herself around to the truth she already knew deep down. Finally, she wipes away her tears and hugs you back, then leaves you with a few last words of instruction you no longer even need, believing that she'll never see you again.

Just how many times are you going to put her through this? The grief for you is dulled by foreknowledge and repetition, but for her it's as sharp as ever. You're not sure which of those things is the bigger problem.

The next room is your chance to make it count for something. Whatever game Flowey's playing, this is where he's going to hit you with the biggest emotional bludgeon he's got. The first time you were here, he wore Toriel's face and mocked her while you sobbed. The last time, he told you of his own lost ability to save and warned you how suddenly what power you had could be snatched away. The time in between, after you'd gone back just far enough to rescue Toriel from your own reckless fury, he recited a list of names and said something that's stuck with you ever since: "Do you think any of those monsters have families? Do you think any of them have friends? Each one could have been someone else's Toriel. Selfish brat. Somebody is dead because of you." As he spoke, he affected a tone of high-minded disdain, but at the end of his speech he dissolved into appreciative laughter at the show you'd put on for him.

It wasn't even anything you hadn't already known. You'd just been forcing that knowledge down beneath the surface where it couldn't get in your way. But Flowey had a way with words, and when he framed it like that, _anyone could be someone else's Toriel_ , it was too easily understood for you to escape from understanding. The part of you that could kill monsters was the part of you that didn't wholly believe they were real people, but Toriel was real, and Toriel was a monster. The part of you that relished your victories felt justified by the fact that the monsters had attacked you first, but Toriel had attacked you too, and the cruelty of that action complicated but could not erase the deep, true goodness you'd seen she had inside. The only meaningful difference between Toriel and every slime and frog and oversized bug in the Ruins was how well you knew her.

You saw clearly what you had to do, but you didn't want to do it. You were already so tired, and there still seemed to be such a long road ahead, and you knew all too well how much it would hurt. The pain of fighting was nothing compared to the pain of watching Toriel die, so it would be worth it in the end if you could spare someone else that worse kind of pain, but it still didn't feel entirely fair. Why couldn't you just make it up by doing better in the future, like a normal person would?

You weren't a normal person, though. You'd never asked for this power, but you couldn't pretend that you didn't want it or would give it up if you had the choice. If you didn't have it, you would be dead, and despite everything, the truth was that you didn't want to die.

 _Somebody is dead because of you_. You didn't want that either, so you rejected it and rerolled the dice.

—

You hear Flowey out one more time, bracing yourself for whatever bombshell he's planning to drop. He talks so much and so fast, and his voice is shrill and difficult to listen to, but you focus as well as you can, because this is important. _He_ is important.

But the hammer never falls. Flowey taunts you with the possibility of finding yourself up against "a relentless killer," as though you haven't already been through the entire Underground without meeting any such person. "I am the prince of this world's future," he says, and the memory of his warm, downy hand fitting perfectly into your own hits you hard enough to knock you breathless.

"Prince!" you echo desperately back to him at the end of his spiel, but he laughs over you and then disappears into the ground.

He really doesn't remember, then. You don't know why or how, but something has gone wrong, and it's going to be a long, hard journey before you even get another chance to talk to him.

 _You could always try this chance again_ , you think idly. _You just have to capture his attention. Do something you've never done before, something he isn't expecting. He wants to meet someone like himself? You can be that person. Make the Ruins go empty, and perhaps he'll see a reason to talk to you for more than a minute._

That _really_ doesn't seem like a good idea.

_Why not? You can always undo it later._

But you can't undo your own memory of treating people like stepping stones on the path to your happy ending. It would be bad. It would make _you_ bad. It's a bad, bad, very bad idea — and, you realize, it's the kind of idea you mostly seem to have when you're in the Ruins.

You think that maybe you should leave here as quickly as possible, and not come back if you can help it.


	3. Caught in the Middle

_"Are you okay? Here, get up... Chara, huh? That's a nice name. My name is..."_

You wake up to the smell of wet garbage and the sound of falling water pounding in your head. You lie still for a moment, halfway wishing that you could just retreat back into that dream, if only for a little while longer. You can't, though, so instead, you struggle to your feet and carry on.

It was nice to hear Asriel's real voice again, even if it was all in your head. You often aren't very good at recognizing voices, but his soft-spoken little bleats are unmistakable. You often aren't very good with names, either, but it helps if you've heard them multiple times and seen them written down, and you're familiar enough with the name Chara that it made sense for you to have dreamed about it even back when you first fell into the dump.

Pretty much everyone who grows up in Fox Valley hears about the runaway kid a hundred years ago whose body turned up in the arms of a monster. The city's one claim to fame is how often it's mentioned in articles with titles like "Five Small Towns With Secret Histories Spookier Than Any Horror Movie". You've read all of the interviews from eyewitnesses and watched the low-quality footage captured by an ancient cellphone camera more times than you can count. You've seen people on the internet explaining how obviously the kid faked it as some weird sort of revenge, or someone else faked it to cover up what really happened to the kid, or there absolutely was a real monster and its behavior only made sense if something else had killed the kid and it was just trying to bring their body to the other humans.

Personally, you used to like to imagine that maybe Chara had been someone a little like you, that maybe they'd gotten to have an adventure like something out of _Where the Wild Things Are_ between the time they'd disappeared and the time they'd turned up dead, and that maybe it had all been worth it to them. You used to think about that a lot — and yet, you never really used to give much thought to the monster you now know was Asriel. At best, people wrote about him like he'd been a smarter-than-average wild animal, and lamented that the villagers had hurt him and chased him away. You never saw anyone really talk about him like he'd been a _person_. No one even talked about the likelihood he'd died from his wounds except in the context of discussing what it meant that no corpse was ever found.

Maybe the strangest thing is that you care so much more about him now that you know he actually _was_ there to hurt people. You can't hold that against him, because he realized the moment he met them face-to-face how different the reality of it was from the convenient fantasy he'd built up in his head, and that's more than you can say for yourself. But he's not some mysterious, noble beast or empty symbol of human cruelty. He's Asriel, a messed up kid like you.

—

"This is it, then," Asgore says as he turns to face you. The glow of the barrier filters through his golden mane, lighting it up like a halo. Even silhouetted as he is, you can make out the gentle sorrow in his expression. "Ready?" he asks, and you are. You've been preparing yourself for this moment all day. You have only a small window of time to make a real change here, but you've figured out exactly how you're going to use it.

When the soul canisters rise up out of the floor, you scream and flinch away. "I don't want to look at those! Put them back!" Everything always ends with Flowey stealing the souls. If you can stop him from doing that, things will be different. They might or might not be different in a _good_ way the first time around, but what's important is that you'll have more to work with.

"Human," Asgore says slowly, his voice strained and his shoulders tensely hunched. "I'm sorry. I truly am. I have no desire to make this any more unpleasant than it needs to be. But..."

"It's going inside of you anyway in the end, right?" you point out quickly. "So can't you just... can't you just do _that_?"

"That is the promise I made, yes." Asgore looks miserable. It occurs to you that maybe he doesn't intend to stop procrastinating once he has the final soul. If killing seven humans is tearing him up inside this much, he can't be any happier about the prospect of killing billions. "Very well," he says even so, and the canisters sink back into storage.

You fight, and it hurts a lot, and you can't really be angry or even resentful about that, because you _chose_ to do this again even after he'd agreed to make peace. You can't be scared, either, because you seem to have worn out your ability to fear. All you can be is a little bit sad.

By the time it's over, you're covered in cuts and burst, oozing burn blisters, but you're still on your feet while Asgore has fallen to his knees. Maybe it's wrong for you to feel sort of good about that — but probably not, because you've worked hard to make something different happen here, and now it finally, finally will.

Just like before, the king pours his agonized heart out to you, then tells you to take his soul and return to the surface. Triumphantly, you refuse. Just like before, he smiles with all the same earnest kindness as Toriel and promises to provide you with shelter and care for the rest of your life. Then you've reached it: the first moment in what feels like ages that you honestly have no idea what happens next. Your heart, already racing with exertion, just about flutters.

That's when Asgore's smile falters. "No. That's just a fantasy, isn't it?" he asks, and you don't understand. He says that you remind him of the first fallen human, and then that he believes you're the angel of the prophesy, and you don't understand. He tells you again to take his soul, and you _really_ don't understand that, because you've already said no, and you'll continue to say no, and nothing he says is going to change your mind.

"I'm sorry I couldn't give you a simple, happy ending," he goes on, as though that were his job and not yours. "But I believe your freedom is what my son... what Asriel would have wanted." And right in front of your eyes, with no cause that you can make any sense of, he turns into dust. His soul lingers for just a moment before being shattered by a familiarly shaped bullet.

You hear Flowey's laughter rising up from the ground beside you. "Wow! That was a lot cleverer than I expected from you! Then again, maybe I _should_ have expected it, huh?"

It wasn't him this time. He shot down the soul, but he didn't do anything before that, or else you would have seen it. If it wasn't Flowey, and it wasn't you, that only leaves one possibility, and you didn't see _him_ do anything either. But maybe you wouldn't have seen it. Maybe if you can sometimes hold yourself together on the edge of death just by force of will, then there are also situations where will alone can push things the other way.

"Anyone with the power to save can just try something over and over until they get it right," Flowey continues. "But all this time I've been watching you, you've barely used that power at all! It's almost like you've done this before. But that's impossible, right? Because _I_ would remember. Unless I chose not to — and I would never intentionally handicap myself against someone who could actually beat me for good! Not unless they were someone I trusted completely. Someone I'd promised I would never doubt. Maybe someone I owed an extraordinary show of trust?" You glance down to see him gazing up at you with a cautious but genuine smile.

It's obvious what he thinks is going on here, but you're still at a loss as to what's actually happening. If Flowey can _choose_ to let his memories be wiped out along with everyone else's, that answers one question but raises a bunch of others.

"So... do I win?" he asks, bouncing side-to-side as though his stem were a spring. You might find it cute, if your head weren't too fuzzy and your chest too tight for you to feel charmed by anything. "Was I just supposed to figure it out, or is there another goal? C'mon, Chara, give me a hint!"

Maybe you really are like the person who laughed it off when they accidentally poisoned someone who loved them like family. Asriel said you aren't, but maybe he was still just projecting what he wanted onto you, because the all-too-literal dust hasn't even settled yet, and already you're thinking about this like a puzzle. You can undo it whenever you choose to, but right now, someone you're supposed to care about is dead. It doesn't feel real, because the whole concept of "right now" no longer feels entirely real.

"Sorry, Asriel," you mumble, because you aren't the friend that he wished for after all. You didn't leave him when he asked you to, and you haven't been taking very good care of his parents. Asgore at least had the excuse of being able to pretend that all this sacrifice is what he would have wanted, but you know better.

"Right. Okay." Flowey giggles like a kid nervously confronting their first crush. "Whatever you want to do is just fine and dandy with me! All I care about is that you're back. I knew you'd be back."

Asriel asked you not to think of this as him, and that's the only request of his that you've actually mostly honored. He sounds so familiar right now, though. It's still Flowey's voice, shrill and grating and unwelcome, but there's another kind of voice that comes through in the words that are said, like with a character's dialogue in a book or un-acted game. In spite of your best efforts, when Flowey talks to you as though you were his friend, the person you hear is Asriel.

"There's another way, right?" you say. "To break the barrier, I mean. Besides seven souls. You only really need six _human_ ones."

"Ah, yeah! Is that what we're doing now?"

You nod. If you can't figure out how to throw things off-track enough to be an improvement, the best you can do is set them back on the track you already know goes somewhere that's more okay than not. It doesn't mean you're giving up, because there might very well still be something you can do between here and the end of the line.

"Okay, cool! Hm..." He bounces around some more, humming thoughtfully to the rhythm. "Yeah. Yeah, that'll work! Just reset to before you fought the soppy old coot and head back to the hotel. I'll take care of everything! You can definitely count on me, Chara. Even after all this time, I'm still your—"

You find yourself panicking for reasons you don't quite understand, and bail from the timeline before he can finish.


	4. Beginning

You go through the final motions and lure your friends into the trap. There are probably more generous ways you could think about it, but everyone else is already being kinder to you than you really deserve, so it's up to you to be honest with yourself.

This time around, you're unruffled by the chaos of everyone rushing in to break up a fight that was never going happen anyway. What strikes you instead is how small this cavern starts to feel the moment there are more than two people in it. Your friends alone take up most of its width when they stand side by side. It's probably going to be a bit of a headache moving the entire population of the Underground out through this passage, which is a little bit funny to think about because that won't be your problem. All _you_ have to worry about is breaking a magical barrier that's held strong for millennia, while making sure that the tens of thousands of monsters trapped by it remain whole enough to leave once it's broken. After that, you can relax and let the adults take care of things.

Though now that you're thinking about it like that, you sort of wish that you could ask for help with this part, too.

"My child, it seems as if you must stay here for a while," Toriel says to you after everyone has finished bickering with and introducing themselves to each other. "But looking at all the great friends you have made, I think..." She smiles at you, infectiously warm and hopeful. Even knowing what's coming, you can't help but smile back. "I think you will be happy here."

The whole cavern fills with echoing shrieks of bitter laughter as vines erupt from the walls and floor to snare everyone but you.

"Pathetic!" Flowey crows as his main body pops up from the ground beside you. "You really think that _you're_ their friend? You oblivious, out-of-touch old _hag_! You don't know anything about them, and you never did!" He turns his head up toward you, his fluid face shifting from a look of dark-eyed, sharp-grinned malice to one of pure adoration. "We did it! I finally got the human souls, and it's all thanks to you." His usually harsh voice is suddenly soft and tender. You can barely hear it over the sound of Toriel and the others screaming as his thorns dig in deep and drain away their souls. "I had no idea you could act like that, but of course you're great at everything. There were moments there I almost started to wonder whether I was the one being tricked, and you actually did feel some kind of pointless affection for these losers. But don't worry: I never _really_ doubted you." He redirects one of the vines spreading aimlessly across the cavern floor to rise up and spiral around your arm. Your muscles tense and your pulse picks up its pace. In your mind you suspect that this is just his attempt at a hug, but your body anticipates pain. "I'm the only friend you need, right? _I_ won't get in your way of doing whatever you want. _I_ won't ask you to sacrifice your freedom for other people's comfort. You've already sacrificed more than enough for these idiots. Do you wanna tell them all exactly how stupid they are, before I end their lives for good?"

You open your mouth to answer, but all that comes out is a useless whining sound.

"Huh? Didn't catch that, sorry. It's hard to hear anything over all that blubbering in the background." He starts to giggle, but is cut off when a burst of fire blasts clean through the vine holding you. A second later, a magic spear sticks him in the face like a dart striking corkboard.

"Don't just stand there, you weenie! I know you've got legs on you, so use 'em!"

"Please, child. Do not endanger yourself on my account. I am old enough to have lived through worse than this."

"Uh... that's... I'm not sure escape is actually possible at this point, but... L-listen to Undyne!"

"No, don't discourage them! The human is cool and tough and charismatic! I'm sure if they just believe in themself, they can... do whatever it is that needs to be done here?"

They're too good. They probably didn't hear the things Flowey was saying to you just now, but if they didn't all care for and trust you so baselessly, surely they'd notice _something_ off about the way he's treating you. Surely they'd realize how little sense it makes for them to be protecting you when they're the ones suffering.

"Shut up!" Flowey screeches at them. "All of you, just shut up! Chara doesn't belong to you! They're _mine_! We're gonna go to the surface and be together forever and forget that any of you worthless clumps of dust ever existed!" There's more screaming, from outside the cavern as well as from Toriel and Sans and Papyrus and Undyne and Alphys and Asgore. Then the pulsing glow of the barrier is washed out by a blinding flash of white light, and the screams cut off abruptly.

"Finally. I was so tired of being a flower." He's here. Everyone else is gone, and Asriel is here. He turns to you and grins wickedly, flexing his pink-padded fingers and giving his head a rapid shake so that his ears flop in his face. "Chara? Are you crying? Aw, I thought _I_ was the baby." He laughs at you, but it sounds more nervous than mocking. "C'mon, cut it out. That's not fair. I'm gonna start crying too, and then you'll find a way to blame me for it even though it'll be all your fault. I'm on to you!" He giggles in a way that you think might be covering up a sniffle.

A strange sort of switch flips somewhere inside of you, and suddenly, instead of being unable to force words out, you can't hold them in. "I'm not Chara."

"Yeah, right. You think I'm gonna fail whatever test this is _now_?" He wrinkles his snout and sticks out his tongue at you.

"I'm not Chara. Don't you remember at all?" Toriel, Papyrus, and Undyne all seemed to recognize you a little when you met them this time around, even if they all managed to explain it away. You believe Asriel can do even better than that, if he just tries. "My name is Frisk."

"Frisk?" His whole body flashes soul-white, and he crosses his arms over his chest. "No! That's... This is a trick, right? All of you are just trying to trick me! I'm not stupid enough to let you go just because you make me feel like I... You're all just _pretending_ to remember something that could never even..." You reach out to him. He grabs your wrist like he intends to shove you away, but instead just ends up squeezing you until you worry he'll cut off the flow of blood to your hand. "Chara's back! I don't care about anything else! They came back from the _dead_ just to see me again, and that means they..." He looks at you pleadingly through lashes studded with tears. "That means you..."

"Chara was, um, not the best person, you said," you remind him. "And... and you were projecting a little, because you thought I would have been the friend you wanted, but... That's wrong, because I'm bad too." As you speak, you can see the hope fading from his face. "Sorry. I'm Frisk, and I'm not good, and I'm not even the not-good person you want. Sorry, sorry."

"N-no! You're nothing like..." He suddenly squeezes you tighter. "What am I saying? Chara _was_ the best! They were stronger and braver and gave more of themself than anyone, so who cares if they..."

"Hurts!" you gasp out. He's going to bruise you, or maybe even crush your bones, and when he does you'll have no one to blame but yourself.

"Oh." Asriel's eyes widen, and his arm goes suddenly limp.

"Sorry," you repeat.

"Frisk, stop. Just stop, okay? _I'm_ sorry! I am so, so sorry, and I... I already did this, didn't I? So... nothing I can say now is worth anything at all." Asriel looks down at his feet. You do too, and see teardrops fall and spatter the bare white fur that covers them. "How many times have we been here, Frisk?"

"Just the once before."

"And you learned your lesson, right? You won't do it again? You don't have to be sorry, just don't do it again."

"But I still have to save you! Isn't there anything different you could do this time?"

"What, like _not_ put everyone's souls back where they belong?" He laughs hollowly. "Please, Frisk, just go live your life. Mine ended before you were even born. It's weird for you to be this hung up on me."

"No! That's dumb! You're here and not dead right now!" You yank your hand free from his already weakening grip and shake the pins-and-needles out of your fingers. "You're a good, good kid who's not dead!" You wrap your arms around him and bury your face against the side of his head, wiping away your tears on the fluff of his ear. He crumples against your shoulder, and you suspect he's using your sweater the same way. "Why did you forget everything? You said it had to be something you chose. I hated it. It was confusing and sad."

"How am I supposed to remember that?" He makes a weird sound that could be a sob or a laugh or a little bit of both. "Um, probably because that was the best possible way things could end, and it happened when I didn't know anything. So, to be sure that it could happen again, I had to forget everything. I don't think I could take everyone's souls if I knew in advance how much it would hurt."

"Sorry." It's hard not to just say that over and over, but there's something off here, and you need to form the words to ask about it. "Um, you were already a flower when I reset, though?"

"Okay?" Asriel sounds confused, but not as confused as you feel.

"So... so, the choice you made, about forgetting, was already as a flower?" You pull back just enough to look him in the face. Nothing you see there suggests that he understands what you're trying to get at. "Forgetting, so that you could make things the best possible for everyone else but not you, even as a flower."

"Oh." Asriel backs away from you and wrings his hands, rubbing off loose fur that floats to the ground like snow before melting into dust. "Sorry, I know what you're thinking, but that doesn't mean I was acting out of compassion. Back when I first became a flower, I did a lot of 'good' things just because I wanted to pretend that I was still a person who cared about goodness. It was probably something like that."

"But you're not dying." You can't believe you've been this stupid for this long. You find yourself bouncing on the balls of your feet. "Asriel, you're not dying! I can visit you any time!"

"Please don't. I don't want to hurt you."

"And that means you won't! You can be good even like that! You just have to try!"

"That's the problem!" He actually stomps his foot in frustration. "After a while, I stop _wanting_ to try."

"I know you can do it," you tell him. "Because you saved _me_. The first time in the Ruins. If you don't remember, I was really bad. You can say I'm not bad now, but I definitely was then, and you said the only thing that could hurt me enough to make me go back and fix it. Even if you didn't feel it, you still thought of it. And I didn't love or care about any of those monsters back then, but you made me want to save them anyway. You're really good at manipulating people. Can't you just manipulate yourself?" Asriel stares at you like you've grown a second head — or maybe like something else that would be more likely to freak out a monster. "Sorry. Is that stupid?"

"No, not at all!" he assures you quickly. His hands are frozen in place, as though he just forgot what he was doing with them mid-fidget. "It sounds a little weird, but I think I know what you mean, and it's actually really smart!"

"And if you're safe to be around, then we can get help from other people, too!" you point out, beaming at the compliment. "Because if you could be like this once, then there's definitely a chance we can make it happen again and make it stick."

"Maybe, but... Don't get your hopes up, okay? I've already tried pretty much everything."

"But how long were you even a flower _for_? I mean, in other people's time, not yours."

"Um, about ten months. Why?"

"Because lots of things take longer than that, silly!" You've gone from bouncing to actually jumping up and down. You feel like you should be too tired to be this jittery, and you'll probably crash hard later, but right now you don't even care. "Especially science making new cures for a disease!"

"A disease?" He laughs like he finds something about that genuinely funny. "That's a weird way to put it, Frisk. But... I guess you're _sort of_ right? I don't know, though. I don't want to be a burden to anyone or make them waste their time on a lost cause, so..."

There isn't a word you know for how ridiculous he's being. So, instead of talking, you move forward and firmly press a kiss to the velvety tip of his nose.

"Ah!" The moment you back away, he grabs one of his ears and pulls it over his face. "Oh, gosh! Frisk, wow, what are you thinking?" His eyes may be hidden, but you can still see his smile.

"You'll feel like this again someday," you tell him. "I promise."

"Gosh," he repeats. "I guess there's no arguing with someone as determined as you."

"Nope!" you agree.

This time, you hold his hand as he breaks the barrier and sets everyone free.

—

When you take a walk to give Toriel and the others a chance to prepare whatever they need to leave Mt. Ebott, you avoid the Ruins. You have a pretty good guess now about what's haunting them — or, rather, what's haunting _you_ , though less and less the further away you get from where you fell — and it's something you don't think you should be messing with. You saw how difficult it was for Asriel to admit even to himself how badly the friend he'd loved so much had hurt him, let alone to hint at it to you. The last thing you want to do is give whatever might be left of that person a chance to talk over him.

When everything is ready, you lead your new friends out into the sun, and feel the warmth of their joy seep into your own heart as you watch them celebrate. One by one, they wander off into the wide world until it's just you and Toriel left. "You must have a place to return to, do you not?" she asks you. "What will you do now?" Her kind eyes shine with hope.

"I want to stay with you," you tell her. Her face lights up brighter than the golden sky as she teases you for not coming to that decision sooner. You laugh along, somehow still feeling okay about yourself even though she's more right than she knows. Her hand envelopes yours like a fluffy, oversized mitt as she leads you down the slope of the mountain.

You're well out of sight of the hole you emerged from when you hear a familiar rustling sound behind you. Looking over your shoulder, you see Asriel pop up from the ground and stare curiously into the sky, his petals gleaming brighter than ever. After a moment, he glances your way to give you a curt nod and a faint smile.

You smile back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. In case anyone is curious: yes, I do have some plans for what comes after this. Whether or not I ever get around to writing them, I hope that "You're a Dicey Situation" can stand on its own. Any further works in this continuity will also be written with the goal of being able to stand on their own.


End file.
